


The Shooting Stars and Silver Moons

by Tori_Scribbles



Series: In A Foxes Hole [4]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alcohol, All The Foxes Are Gay, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Coming Out, Drinking Games, During: The Kings Men, Everyone Is Gay, Everyone Needs A Hug, Everyone Needs Therapy, F/F, F/M, Families of Choice, Gambling, Impled/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Conversion Therapy, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, M/M, NaNoWriMo2018, Nicky Hemmick's Sexuality 101 Class, Protective Nicky Hemmick, Sexuality Crisis, Spring, The Foxes Vacation After Neil Gets Kidnapped, Unconventional Families, ish, this is soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-30
Updated: 2018-11-30
Packaged: 2019-09-02 19:09:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16792993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tori_Scribbles/pseuds/Tori_Scribbles
Summary: Nicky made it seem like this was their latest drinking game and then gestured to himself. “Gay,” he said as if this was news to anybody and then gestured to Aaron on his right who stared at him blankly. “Alright, Aaron’s straight. Nobody’s surprised. Moving on.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> In honour of finishing Nano today, I thought I'd post the next, actually lighthearted, instalment of this series!  
> This is set during spring break in The Kings Men while they're all up in the cabin!   
> The title comes from: For Him by Troye Sivan

The days at the cabin were bright and filled with a certain ease that Neil wanted to get lost in but also, at times, set him on edge. It was like it was too quiet, too settled and it was just time before the next disaster struck. The alcohol helped. Neil didn’t drink nearly as much as the others, he didn’t have the tolerance for it; something that Nicky found both pitiful and hilarious.

Drinking games became an almost every day occurrence. But because the foxes were the foxes, there were certain stipulations with certain games. Types of questions that couldn’t be asked to certain people, something which Neil picked up on very quickly. Never Have I Ever was a minefield of potential triggers, but again, the alcohol seemed to help in an unhealthy amount of ways.

Once everyone was drunk and the evening wore on, they tended to lounge around the den, with a movie on – because Matt was appalled by Neil’s lack of movie knowledge and insisted the catch him up immediately – or they would just talk, sometimes about Exy, sometimes about life or sometimes about each other.

So when Nicky turned the conversation personal one evening, nobody was really that surprised.

“Are Allison and Renee also a thing now or is my gaydar really slipping?” he asked, breaking the tipsy silence from where he was lounging sideways across an armchair.

Everyone looked across at him in a mixture of surprise and confusion. Neil let his eyes drift across from Nicky to the girls. They were sitting on one of the loveseats, Allison’s head resting in Renee’s lap as the older girl played with her hair. It was an intimate gesture, but it was Allison and Renee. It was no different from usual. There was always a connection between them that they didn’t have with the others and it only seemed to grow stronger after Seth died and they seemed even closer in the time that they’d been here.

“No,” Matt said confidently, then fumbled in confusion as neither girl denied it. “Wait, really?”

Allison tilted her head back to look at Renee and shrugged slightly. Renee held her gaze for a minute and they seemed to have an entire conversation just through a look.

“It’s a thing,” Renee said, then looked at Andrew, “your fifty bucks is in my purse.”

Neil’s head snapped across to look at Andrew who ignored him but inclined his head to Renee in a slight nod and even in the dim lighting of the room, there seemed to be a little bit less tension in Andrew’s expression.

“Wait, what did you bet on?” Dan asked.

“If I was straight or not,” Allison said with a fond roll of her eyes, “and if anything would happen between us before graduation.”

Matt groaned, digging his wallet out of his pocket. He pulled out a note, screwing it up he threw it across the room with surprising accuracy and Andrew watched passively as it bounced off his chest and fell into his lap.

“How many people took that bet?” Allison asked, more curious than offended.

“You won five hundred dollars on me,” Andrew said blandly and Allison pulled a face.

“I won five hundred dollars between the two of you, you’re not that special,” she said, “also, our teammates are incapable of seeing what’s right in front of them.”

“Do you make a habit of betting on each other’s sexualities?” Neil asked but realistically he already knew the answer.

“We bet on _everything_ ,” Nicky said, stressing the word with a manic grin that could rival Andrew's, “you should be aware of this by now.”

“People lost money because they said you were gay,” Matt said, “but gained money by being vague about it.” He shot Allison a dirty look who just smirked and shrugged.

“He said he was ace on day one. Him being demi wasn’t that big of a leap,” she said, “I win.”

Neil frowned at the words and looked across at Andrew for help but he was too busy rolling his eyes at their teammates. When he looked to Nicky for answers, Nicky faltered as if in his drunken state he forgot that Neil had never received a full education. Nicky didn’t outright explain but turned back to the room with a clap of his hands.

“We should settle all of these bets now,” he said, “we’re gonna have fresh meat in a few months and then we can do it all over again.”

Matt grumbled that it was more fun to find these things out as they went along but when Allison and Dan seemed up for it, he realised he was outvoted and went with it. Neil couldn’t deny he too was curious.

“Great! Keep tabs!” Nicky made it seem like this was their latest drinking game and then gestured to himself. “Gay,” he said as if this was news to anybody and then gestured to Aaron on his right who stared at him blankly. “Alright, Aaron’s straight. Nobody’s surprised. Moving on.”

Apparently, Renee was just as gay as Nicky and Andrew, and Neil didn’t know why he was surprised considering her rainbow hair.

Allison, Dan and Matt threw around the word bisexual but Neil didn’t break their easy bickering to ask what it meant.

Kevin however, doesn’t – in his exact words – “give a flying fuck.” Because he had better things to be doing – exy – than picking out different terminologies for something as inconsequential as his sexuality.

It was a declaration that nobody was all that surprised with. After all, for years Kevin hadn’t had the option to even look at someone, man or woman with suffering Riko’s fury and now even with the freedom he had, nothing came before exy.

Money was passed around the room as years of outstanding wagers were settled and when Matt looked disgruntled Dan had just laughed, drunkenly slapping a kiss to his cheek and told him to get a better gaydar.

“Is it one of the conditions Coach has. ‘You can only be a Fox if you’re not straight or are related to one of the not straight ones’?” Nicky asked, a good five minutes after the conversation had died down and everyone looked across at him in confusion, wondering where that came from whilst also not disagreeing with his theory.

Something about it made both Allison and Renee laugh and maybe it was the alcohol, or maybe it was just the breaking point after weeks of tension but it was contagious. Laughter spread around the room and the ridiculousness of the situation only made them laugh harder.

As it started to die down Neil groaned as the bruises that laughter had disturbed throbbed. When he looked across at Andrew, even he was smiling an actual, unmedicated smile and Neil wished that he could savour this feeling.

This warmth and these people forever.

But a part of him knew if they all got through this alive, he would have these people forever in one way or another. The foxes would be a part of each other’s lives long after they left Palmetto. And they were all more than okay with that. Because family wasn’t just for a few years in your early twenties.

It was forever.

No matter what.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was pretty uncertain about whether to split this or not, but in the end, it just worked better as different chapters.

As conversations started to drift and separate, Neil excused himself to get another drink but instead, headed out of the back door, dropping down to sit on the edge of the deck. As he looked out across the dark garden and the stars in the sky he felt a strange sense of peace. It wasn’t quite freedom, and he wouldn’t ever have that while Riko was around, but it was the closest thing to freedom he’d ever had and he longed for more of it.

“Neil, what’re you doing out here?”

Neil looked up as Nicky, looking slightly unsteady on his feet, came to sit next to him.

“Just thinking,” Neil replied honestly.

“’Bout what?”

“Life.”

Nicky made a noise of displeasure. “I try to avoid that if I can help it.”

“I keep wondering what it would be like if I’d never come here. If my mother had never run or if I was just a normal kid with a normal family,” Neil admitted and he didn’t know why he was telling Nicky this, he wanted to blame it on the alcohol but it was nice being able to just talk to someone and not have to hide the truth.

“Why?” Nicky asked quietly.

“Because I want to be normal.” It was a quiet admission that his mother would have slapped him for and Kevin would have rolled his eyes at but Nicky just bumped his shoulder gently against Neil’s.

“Do you know how often when I was in high school that I wished I could be normal?” he asked. “So I could know what my friends knew. So I didn’t have to go to places that they didn’t have to. I wished and I prayed for it every day.”

“Me too,” Neil said softly.

“What made you think about it now?”

Neil shrugged. “Allison said I was demisexual.”

It clearly wasn’t the answer that Nicky was expecting judging by the way he faltered for a moment. “Are you?”

Neil looked up at the sky. They were far enough away from the city that the light pollution wasn’t as bad and the constellations were clear. He studied them for a minute. Not knowing where one started and the next ended, but he could admire its beauty nevertheless.

“I don’t know,” he whispered eventually and he didn’t have to look to know that Nicky was watching him closely.

“Do you not know what you feel or do you what it means?” he asked. “Because both of those are okay.”

“I don’t know what it means,” Neil admitted, ignoring the rush of embarrassment that settled in his gut. “Which is stupid because normal teenagers know this shit.”

“No they don’t,” Nicky said and when Neil looked up at him, Nicky was watching him with that soft, sad look on his face that he got whenever Neil asked something stupid or obvious. It was a look that said Nicky wanted to fight everyone who deprived Neil of whatever experience lead him to being so uncertain in life. “I didn’t know anything until I went to Germany. Do you think Renee, Andrew or even Dan got gay terminology 101 classes where they grew up? Matt wasn’t out until last year and Allison wasn’t until an hour ago; not really.

“And not necessarily because they’re ashamed or scared but for a number of reasons. Maybe they didn’t have the words to explain it before, maybe they just didn’t care. Not every teenager's life revolves around relationships, sex and sexuality, which is okay. It’s different for everybody.”

Nicky’s expression was unwavering and his voice was certain. Neil knew he was blatantly and excitably unapologetic about his sexuality after everything but it was at times like this that Neil found himself once again wondering how much of Nicky’s personality was just a shield to hide the more sincere man he was underneath.

“Do you want to know what it means?” Nicky asked after giving Neil a moment to process what he said and when Neil nodded, he smiled. “So, asexual means that someone doesn’t have sexual feelings or attraction, mostly towards other people. They don’t look at someone and go ‘I want to fuck them’. And Demisexual is similar. Demisexual means that they’re not pickier necessarily, but they tend to prefer a connection to a person before anything happens. It’s almost a person thing than a gender thing. Does that make sense?”

Neil nodded. Because it did. As other Foxes had pointed out, Neil barely glanced at anyone, girls or boys. He didn’t care enough to, even when he could. He’d said himself that he wasn’t interested enough time. Until Andrew. And he’d hated Andrew at first. It was months before there was anything there that wasn’t completely volatile.

But then it changed.

Neil trusted Andrew more than he’d ever trusted anyone before and that trust was reciprocated. Andrew saw things in Neil that Neil didn’t see in himself and in turn, he saw Andrew in a way that nobody else could. It wasn’t perfect but it was mutual and above every other connection Neil had.

And even now that Neil had relationships and sex as viable options, it was just Andrew. He couldn’t imagine it to be anyone else. When he looked at other people there was nothing there. He just didn’t care. They weren’t the same.

“Oh,” Neil said smartly after a while, pulling himself out of his head. Maybe Allison was right after all. “Yeah.”

“Then you have bisexual, which means you like both men and women,” Nicky went on. “Some have a preference, some just… go with the flow. Then pansexual is kinda similar to bi, it’s people being attracted to people, no matter what. There’s a lot of debate over how different being bi and pan are but it’s much too much for my drunk brain and your baby gay brain to go into right now unless you really want to. Then you just have your gays and lesbians which are strictly the same sex. There are diagrams and charts that could probably explain this better than me.”

But Neil shook his head. “No,” he said, “it makes sense.”

Nicky’s expression softened into a smile. “Good,” he said, “do you have any other questions?”

Neil shook his head again, looking back out across the gardens. “I don’t think so,” he said. “Thank you.”

“Anytime,” Nicky said, reaching out to ruffle Neil’s hair and for once Neil didn’t push him away as everything made just a little bit more sense.

**Author's Note:**

> All mistakes are my own.  
> Comments and Kudos are appreciated ♥


End file.
